About Manifest Files and Resource Files

Although your authoring tool, or the LMS, creates the necessary SCORM parameters, you need to be familiar with two key components of SCORM in order to maintain your loaded content. These components are the manifest files and resource files. Manifest files define the structure of activities, the menu of items the user sees, how users navigate from item to item, how items are scored, the rules involved in rolling up status information, and other aspects of the activity's behaviour.

Resource files are the images, text, and other items that users interact with. Manifest files point to the resources needed for the learning activity.

For example, the Introduction to Blueprints learning activity is made up of numerous items. One of them is a Study Guide item that launches a PDF file for the user to read. The fact that the Study Guide is available to the user, where in the structure and flow of the learning activity the user sees it, and the item's name are all controlled by the manifest file for that learning activity. The PDF file itself is a resource file that is pointed to by the manifest file.